What discount do you get for 15/30 free hours?

[FreeHoras]

I get nowhere near ‘30 free hours’ as the headline policy suggests.

Averaged across the year it’s 22 hours a week… so, about 40% of the total fees in principle.

A full time place = £2,007

With 15 hours = £1,800 (10% reduction)

With 30 hours = £1,600 (20% reduction)

You can do minimum 3 days a week - so the ‘cheapest’ option with 30 free hours is >£900pcm.

I appreciate the nursery is given a rate of funding far below the cost of the service.

Should it be rebranded £50/£100 childcare a week? This would be more accurate.

The current name implies parents get 60% of their bill funded.

The y really do need to change the name, it's very misleading for parents. Those of us working in early years have been campaigning for the literature and publicity to be changed to "funded" or "subsidised" for years. My last nursery closed last year due to financial struggles. We were paid £3.80 per child per hour, for those hours, yet it cost us over £8.50, again, per child, per hour. We couldn't carry on, let alone provide a high quality Montessori early education. A lot of nurseries are in this situation and it is entirely the government's fault. Yet they spin the yarn to the parents about free hours, so that it becomes our fault for trying to recoup some of the costs. It's a horrible situation all round.

My childminder uses it as 30 hours without a top up, so averaged across 12 months it's
30 x 38 (term weeks) = 21.9 hours per week free. My child is with her 8h x 4 (days pw) so 32h. I pay for about 10h per week so 10x52 / 12 = 43h per month. Works out at £281 per month, which I then reduce through tax free childcare (which is a joke because I pay 40% tax and only receive the 20% but another thread)

Mine doesn't

This isn't true.

It's up to each setting how they allocate the funded hours.

They can be offered across the year.

They can be offered for only 3 hours per day (15 hours)

They can be offered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only.

Etc
Etc
Etc

Once they start school then you only get approximately 30 hours term time only so would effectively be worse off if more was being offered to preschoolers. Surely you should be getting about £800 off your nursery bill (although ours charged a top up so a bit less) so your bill wouldn’t be £1600.
Also don’t forget your current fees are well above the amount you can fully pay using TFC account (with the 20% off) but obviously with the 30 hours funding bringing down your bill you will now get 20% off a greater proportion of the remaining bill. Personally think what is really unfair is that children who turn 3 on the 1st of April don’t get any funding until September but hopefully that will change with the new entitlements

My nursery charges on top of the ‘free hours’, as they can’t afford to run otherwise.
With my eldest they went 15 hours a week to a pre school, but we still had to pay for the ‘lunch hour’ and a ‘voluntary’ contribution on top.
The government don’t give enough funds. It definitely shouldn’t be advertised as free.
With the ‘free’ hours for 2 year olds coming in April, we get one day ‘free’ at our nursery (which the nursery still then charges £30 for).

I'm amazed at some of these responses. Mine are both in primary school now, but when we received the 30 funded hours (up to 2022), we paid very little.

When in FT, 9-5 nursery, our funded hours were in fact 'free', but we paid £3 a day for hot lunch/snacks, plus £6 per hour over and above the 30 hours (we did 40 hours a week). So £60 per week + £15 for lunches = £75 per week x 4 (roughly) = £300 less 20% for tax free childcare and we paid £240 per month for FT 5 days a week 9-5 every day at a very good nursery.

When we did preschool (different setting from above), which was 9-3 5 days a week, we did an extra hour, so 8:30-330, each day at £5 per hour, so £25 per week on top of the funded hours (which were free), which was £100 a month. I think we did pay something extra for lunch, but usually the totally monthly cost was around £75-125 a month with tax free childcare.

This is in the South West. And obviously, this is term time, not stretched. We paid full price during holidays or used a holiday club, which is £20 per day per child, 8:30-430, not including lunch (have to send a packed lunch). We still use this holiday club and it's still £20 for a full day, minus tax free childcare.

It's the same in our nursery - about 200 pounds discount to cover 15 'free' hours. There are pre-schools connected to primary schools which are free or charge very little but they only work 9 to 3 term time.

Ours was £1127 (after the 20% TFC discount) and £650-£700 with the 30 funded hours and TFC (stretched over the full year and including a £30 top up a week for the funded days) so quite a big saving.

It works out as £470 a month for wrap around/holiday care for school age children but they don’t get any meals (except lunches at school term time till Y2) with that whereas the nursery provided home cooked breakfast, lunch, dinner and 2 substantial healthy snacks per day. You do miss how much nursery take care of everything for you once they’re at school!

Ours went from £1300 a month down to £450-£500 a month. I take the full 30 hours a week and don't stretch as DH is a teacher so we don't need holiday care, and she goes in from 8-4 so a shorter day than others (or would be an additional £15 a day if she was in until six.

I am over the moon with that saving, it's huge and has made a significant difference.

If we had done that my savings definitely wouldn't have been £800 a month - the hourly rate they actually pay is miles off the nursery actual hourly rate even with the consumables charge.

We have to pay around £2.50 per hour top up for the “free” hours and of course full price for all other hours.

The biggest unfairness in the system which will only get worse when the free hours are extended is that they only take into account the higher earners salary. If one parent earns 100k you get nothing other than the 15 free hours at 3. You won’t even have access to the tax free savings scheme.

A family with a far higher joint household income equally split between both parents will benefit by over £20k vs the single higher earner over the full nursery period. That feels grossly unfair.

Surely it all depends on your nursery and working hours. I work part-time. Our nursery charges by the hour. We are within the 30 hour limit. We only need term-time. So we don't pay anything for childcare.

I do sympathise as not all nurseries are able to offer this provision nor everyone able to work part-time/term-time. Childcare is very expensive and we've only just begun to benefit from the free 30 hours.

Our nursery doesn’t allow anything other than full days for 51 weeks of the year.

They also have minimum requirements for use of free hours. You need to do at least 2 full days if you use 15 free hours or 4+ full days for 30.

If you wanted to do just 2 days then a full day is 9.5 hours which means that you need to fund 19 hours per week of which only 11 would be partially funded. You would still pay around £2.50 per hour for those along with full pay for the other 8 hours.

You basically end up with £50 per week discount on a £550 monthly bill if you do 2 days.

If you do 5 days it goes from about £1500 per month down to £1250 if you have 15 hours and £1000 if you have 30.

It’s a double whammy for higher earners as you don’t qualify for either the 30 free hours or the tax free savings scheme.

This means households with one higher earner are paying £1250 per month when free hours kick in whereas some other households with higher combined incomes are only paying £800.

It is a highly inequitable system.

That is a kicker. We are low earners so will take our wins where we can.
But the 30 hours free childcare does exist, for some people with the right nursery /salary and working hours. There is never a system that works for all.
I agree that the income should be calculated against household as opposed to individual.
Let me be clear, I am not in support of the tories!

If you use childminders or a school attached pre school then you tend to see 100% of the benefit

Also why my twins are on term time only contracts with their childminder

Hourly rate paid by the LA to childminder in my area is roughly £4.25 va hourly rate of £4.50 so the childminder "only" loses 25p an hour and I make that up via a contribution to learning resources and activities